Stay tuned

Share it

On being a neighbor

You're good at what you do. You study and listen and read - honing your trade - only to understandably and occasionally forget that behind the progress toward success are real neighbors consuming your work.

So you must ask - and keep asking - not the myopic, "How can I get customers to fall in love with my product?" but a more generous, "How can I love by getting this product to my customers?"

It’s a Wonderful Life, 12 Angry Men, The Green Mile, Gattaca. These are a few of the movies on my Top 10 list. Bring together a compelling story, redemption, fine acting and a smart script, and I’m hooked.

What we watch says a lot about what matters to us. Show me your Top 10, and I bet I can make a few accurate assumptions about what you value...

This excerpt comes from an article I wrote for HighCallingBlogs.com last week. If you have four or five minutes, go and read "Culture Corner: Top 10 Reasons to Hope." You'll see the Top 10 Worldwide Box Office movies from 1999-2008, and you'll have to consider why these particular films made it to the top.

At least I had to. For you folks interested in advertising, I'll also note that this list made me consider the relationship between advertising and human need. Advertising creates awareness, encourages participation, dispenses information and influences consumer expectations. But, as I've said before, it can't create needs. You may disagree with me on this point, but I believe advertising can only borrow from what already exists.

If this is true, what already exists in us for these films to work? What do consumers need that these movies address? If there really is something to address, how much influence does advertising have in turning them into global hits?

I recently posted on Snuggie Blankets and learned helplessness, but my eye-rolling has had little to no effect. It seems that the world has fallen in love. This morning I came across a creative bit of earned media for Snuggie Blankets at Patrol.com. Sharon writes:

Dear Snuggie,

I’ll never forget the first time my eyes met yours. I was sitting at home on the couch, cold and lonely, in a dead-end relationship with yet another blanket....

According to the Higher Education Research Institute's Freshmen Survey, the top three reasons students give for attending college are:

1. To "learn about things that interest me."2. To get a better job.3. To be able to make more money.

If these are true, then it follows that students try to pick schools that help them achieve these (ahem*self-serving*cough) goals. The marketing question I'm curious about is, How much influence does an institution's slogan have on the decision process? Does a prospective student, fence-riding between colleges, read slogans like the following and make their decision?

"Your revolution starts here."

"Minds in the making."

"Grasp the forces driving the change."

"Where you're a name, not a number."

I don't remember my college's slogan, or if it had one, though if it did I suppose it could have played a small role in my decision. No idea. But if the topic of writing good college slogans interests you, check out this humorous article by copy-writer and teacher, George Felton (That's his book cover), and the Columbus Society of Communicating Arts from which the article came.

"The more Gospel-inspired lay people there are engaged in these realities,clearly involved in them,competent to promote themand conscious that they must exercise to the full their Christian powers which are often buried and suffocated,the more these realities will be at the service of the kingdom of God...." - Pope Paul VI